


Hearts and Bones

by dreamlittleyo



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, F/M, Family, Ghosts, Haunting, Hunting, Romance, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, Wordcount: Over 1.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-17
Updated: 2011-04-17
Packaged: 2017-10-18 05:20:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/185469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamlittleyo/pseuds/dreamlittleyo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bill Harvelle keeps an eye on his little girl and Jo lives her life. (S2 AU)<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	Hearts and Bones

Bill Harvelle's not an angry spirit. Not yet.

He's been dead for more than a decade, been around the block once or twice in that time. He's tried and failed to touch the world around him and doesn't know why it never works. He knows a thing or two about ghosts—at least he thought he did—and every ghost _he_ ever hunted could manifest and cause all kinds of problems. He can't even turn the pages of a book in the hopes of figuring out exactly what's holding him back.

But he's never regretted his decision to stay.

It's been worth every heartbreaking moment getting to watch his little girl grow up.

When Jo turns fifteen, she starts carrying his knife around with her, and Bill realizes it's that knife tying him to the world—because now that she's carrying it, he can follow her close. No more worrying every time she wanders too far for him to reach.

Bill wishes like hell he could protect her—like a father should—but as more years go by he realizes she doesn't need much protecting.

He tries not to intrude, even though she'll never know he's there as he watches her in the quiet moments of the night. He tries not to intrude, because it's not his place, but sometimes it's hard to take that step back and disappear.

Jo goes off to college eventually, after a tense compromise and a promise to give it a chance. She dates a nice boy her sophomore year, a physics major named Joey who buys her flowers and takes her to movies and laughs at the fact that their names confuse everybody. Bill thinks maybe this kid's the One, from the way the boy makes her smile.

When Jo quits school she leaves him behind. She puts on a strong face when she tells her mom, but that night Bill sits on the edge of his little girl's bed and watches her cry.

It breaks his heart when she takes off hunting, her duffel lightly packed and his knife in easy reach. He catches a disjointed glimpse of Ellen's shattered face left behind, and he wishes he were _real_ because his wife's pain tears straight into him. It nestles right up against his own fear, and if he could make Jo hear him he'd tell her to end this foolishness and get her ass home. Where it's maybe not safe, but still a whole lot safer than this: driving a junker car around the country alone, busing tables and picking up tips to keep moving, hunting things that Bill doesn't want anywhere near his baby girl.

If he still had a heart, it would've stopped a dozen times over at the close scrapes, the near misses, the number of times Jo barely makes it out with her skin intact. Once she teams up with the Winchester boys of all people, trying to pin down a nasty spirit in a Pennsylvania apartment building. "It's my way of being close to him," she tells the older of the brothers. ' _No_ ,' he wants to say. ' _Baby, I'm right here_.' But of course she doesn't hear him.

Jo goes after a Black Dog just north of the Canadian border, and right from the start Bill knows it's trouble. She needs backup, but she's going in alone, and there's a tight, sick certainty in Bill's chest that tells him he's about to watch her die. She packs up her supplies and heads for the woods—sets a trap that should be good enough, but he already knows the dog will be too strong.

The chase goes poorly, the beast closes in, and Bill's scream is intangible and useless.

He's startled by movement from another direction, fast and unexpected, and the Black Dog dissolves into a sticky puddle on the forest floor. John Winchester stands over the mess, offering Jo a hand up, and Bill didn't think he could ever be so happy to see his old friend—not after the way things went down before.

But he's giddy with relief, so grateful he could cry as he watches the man ask if Jo is all right.

He's still watching later, when the two have relocated back to Jo's motel room to clean up. There's an edgy tension in the air that sets Bill's hair on end and makes him feel like an intruder. He's not as surprised as he maybe should be when Jo gives enough of a shove to make John fall to the edge of the bed, or when she drops onto his lap and kisses him.

There's a moment of fury when John's first response is to kiss her back. Of course there's fury, because that's Bill's baby girl and John Winchester has no goddamn right—

But John pushes her away eventually, and Bill can see the guilt and uncertainty staining the man's face. He sees the heavy swallow and the care with which he keeps his hands settled as inoffensively as possible at Jo's waist.

"This is wrong, girl," John says. "There are a whole lot of things you don't know about me." If Bill had a voice, he would loudly concur.

"What, you're going the 'I have secrets' route? I figured you'd be more the 'but I'm twice your age' type."

"There's that, too."

"I don't care," says Jo, and when she kisses John again Bill knows neither one of them will be stopping any time soon. He turns his back rather than watch. This is one thing he doesn't want to see.

He thinks about staying to stand guard, even though there's nothing he can do. Even though the breathy noises behind him leave him uncomfortable with the knowledge that he's intruding.

But he knows John Winchester as well as any man. Whatever his faults, Bill knows the hunter will do right by Jo. Besides, this is his daughter's life, and Bill is nothing but an unrealized interloper. He closes his eyes and focuses hard and makes himself disappear.

For now it's all he can do.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Cutting Edge [the Someone Has to Bleed Remix]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/210515) by [ratherastory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ratherastory/pseuds/ratherastory)




End file.
